The Nation | IN BRIEF / FLORIDA

Growers Get a Break on Cleanup of 'Glades

The Florida Supreme Court ruled that sugar producers are not solely responsible for paying to clean up pollution in the Everglades, a bitter blow to environmentalists who had been trying to force growers to pay more to cleanse Florida's famed River of Grass.

The state's highest court upheld a lower court ruling and its own 1997 advisory opinion that sugar growers should not be responsible for a constitutionally mandated cleanup of a huge agricultural region within the Everglades.